Levantine · Dessert
Halawet el Jibn
- Advanced
- 40 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, a floral thread lifting the aroma, closing toasted and warm.
Ingredients
- 400 g akkawi cheese, or low-moisture mozzarella
- 150 g fine semolina
- 300 g caster sugar
- 200 ml water
- 5 ml lemon juice
- 30 ml orange blossom water
- 250 g ashta or thick clotted cream
- 60 g pistachios, finely ground
- 10 ml rose water
Equipment
Piping bag
The skills inside
Sugar stages & caramelKneading dough
The words inside
The Floral Pantry: Rose, Orange Blossom & MahlebAkkawi & Nabulsi
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy · nuts
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- If you are using akkawi, cube it and soak in several changes of cold water over about 8 hours, tasting until only a whisper of salt is left, then drain and pat it dry. 480 min
- Boil the sugar, water and lemon juice until the syrup runs off a spoon in a thread rather than drops, take it off the heat and stir in the orange blossom water; set half aside for serving.
- Warm the other half of the syrup in a wide pan over low heat, add the cheese and stir until it melts into long strings, then rain in the semolina and keep stirring until the mass leaves the sides in one glossy sheet.
- Tip it onto a syrup wetted surface and knead with a wet palm until smooth and elastic, then press or roll it out to about 3 mm and cut into strips a hand wide.
- Pipe a line of ashta down each strip, roll it up, chill briefly, then dress with the reserved syrup, the ground pistachio and the rose water.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Sugar stages & caramel 53 recipes
- Nothing is stirred once it is boiling, and any crystals clinging to the side of the pan are brushed down rather than left to fall in.
- Judged by temperature or by a tested stage rather than by time: consecutive stages are a few degrees apart and look identical in the pan.
- Colour is read off the heat and in good light, remembering that sugar keeps darkening after the flame is out.
- Stopped decisively at the point wanted: off the heat and into the next liquid or onto a cold surface, rather than left to coast in a hot pan.
- The result is clear and smooth rather than grainy, cloudy, or seized into a solid mass.
Where it goes wrong It was stirred after coming to the boil, or a stray crystal from the side of the pan fell back in. One crystal seeds the whole pan and the syrup turns grainy within seconds, and once sugar has crystallised the only cure is more water and starting the whole thing again.
Kneading dough 57 recipes
- The work changed it: what began shaggy and rough is one smooth, cohesive mass, with nothing raggy hanging off it.
- The surface has gone satin and barely tacky, releasing cleanly from hands and board instead of leaving a trail.
- Worked to the point this dough asks for and no further: springy and elastic where structure is wanted, just brought together where tenderness is.
- Torn or cut open, the inside is uniform: no dry streaks, no unmixed pockets, no core of flour that never met the water.
- After its rest it rolls and shapes without snapping back. A dough that fights the pin needed more rest, not more force.
Where it goes wrong Sticking was fought with flour instead of technique or patience, stroke after stroke, until the dough had taken in far more than the formula asked; it turns tight and dry under the hands, and bakes dense however well everything else goes.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Moscato d’Asti
- Also Right
- Late-harvest Riesling
- From the Taps
- Witbier
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling elderflower
Citrus desserts need a wine sweeter than they are, with acid enough to keep up: light, frothy, and low-proof wins.
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